Confused between Samsung Galaxy Grand and Micromax A116 Canvas HD, help.

I am confused between the Samsung Galaxy Grand and the Micromax A116 Canvas HD. Could you please advise what is a better purchase?

—Umesh Taneja Kartik Gandhi, Vikas Kajla, Siddharth Chaurasia, Shanay Singh, Ankit Sharma

Both, the Canvas HD and the Galaxy Grand, are 5-inch phablets that run on Android 4.1 Jelly Bean and come with 8MP cameras. That said, there are a few differences. Let's look at these phones individually.

Micromax A116 Canvas HD: Micromax boasts of a quadcore processor under its hood that far outperforms the Galaxy Grand, allowing for a smooth experience that complements its good build quality. The handset handles multi-tasking well and plays any video or game without a stutter. The IPS HD screen is also sharp and has wide viewing angles, but colours look washed out when compared to the Grand. The camera on this device is its biggest drawback, with pictures appearing blurry in low light and light sources showing streaks; it's passable to use with apps like Instagram. Sound quality is good, but be warned that you need to use the earphones packaged with the device - other 3.5mm headphones may not work as well.

Samsung Galaxy Grand: Spec-to-spec, the Galaxy Grand is closer to the Micromax A110 Canvas 2 than the A116 Canvas HD. But what you get is a customized Android interface that is really quite nice and intuitive to use, especially for first-time smartphone owners. The device looks and feels premium, and even though the screen isn't HD, it pumps out vibrant colours and has great viewing angles. What's more, for multimedia, it's a far better phone than the Canvas HD - sound quality is very good and the camera captures images with accurate colour representation. But the dual-core processor makes the phone stutter when multitasking, and there are a couple of times when the screen froze on us during tests. In fact, a few users we know have had repeated problems with the handset periodically hanging and rebooting.

So what should you buy? Both the phones offer middling battery life, but have good build quality, so it's the individual features that separates them. With its high-def screen, stellar performance and lower price, the Canvas HD is the better choice for anyone who doesn't care about camera performance as much. However, if multimedia is what matters to you, then the Galaxy Grand is a better purchase. What you should also consider here is that Samsung is a tried-and-tested brand, known for its quality after-sales service and support. It inspires more confidence in the event of things going wrong as compared to Micromax, which doesn't have a great track record in after-sales support, nor the same number of service centers.